Federal Online Gaming Bill Looks Doomed Already

The word from US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is that the most recent online gambling bill, introduced just last week is something not worth getting too excited about. Senator Reid believes that the battle was all but over after his bid failed last floor when that one failed to gain momentum and didn't make it to the Senate floor. Speaking to the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, Reid said that he has, “felt for several months now that I don’t see any movement on this … We’re still trying, but I’m not really confident we can get something done.” However Senator Reid did go further than saying this bill would be a no go and added that not only would it not make it through the House of Representatives but could quite possibly 'doom' other legislative efforts. The belief is that whilst Reid's bill stood a small chance in that it was online poker only focused, Senator Kings recent bid goes way to far in asking for everything but online sports betting be considered for regulation. It's felt by many observers that this is way too much for the anti gambling folk and also could also be seen unfavorably by much of the casino support that backed the earlier bid who may now see this as a threat to their established and lucrative businesses.

The View From the American Gaming Association

As always there's plenty of blame thrown around when something such as this fails, and in Reid's bills case last fall it came down to a tit for tat argument between Nevada's Senator's and this bid has attracted other industry comment, this time from the AGA CEO Frank Fahrenkopf. Fahrenkopf has now blamed both sides and speaking to Gambling Compliance he said that he and his colleagues had, “worked our tails off and to get to the point where nothing was even introduced that we could go out and try to sell … that was my biggest disappointment … We were going to follow the senators, and the senators couldn't do it.” There was of course comeback to those comments and Senator Reid's spokesperson stated that the bill failed, quite clearly, from a lack of Republican support and regarding Fahrenkopf himself, that if he'd, “spent less time dealing with the presidential debates and more time actually doing his job as head of the gaming association we could have passed this bill.” It appears from all angles that at the moment this and quite possibly future bills regarding online gambling will fail due to the many splits in the many camps involved. The plain fact is that interested parties cannot agree and until then it's looking likely that it's back to square one, and quite possibly square two is looking a little bit further to reach.